an almost really grown up blog.

i'm going to start out this blog by saying that on monday night, i went to a drag show.

this was not my first drag show. this was my second drag show, and i liked it more than the first.

i will also say that i really really enjoy drag shows, and on that note, i am dressing in drag for halloween. if this just altered your opinion of me, that's perfectly acceptable. drag queens are beautiful and i admire what they do. a lot.

this has absolutely nothing to do with the gist of my blog. i'm just throwing that out there because by god, i love drag shows.

this blog is about me being a real person.

if you've read my blogs, you've heard this before. i honestly don't even remember what i said constituted being a real person. something about living on your own... or taking care of a house... having a job? maybe? something? anyway, this is a different type of real person.

this is me jumping feet first into my future and screaming and flailing. it was an adventure.

in my education class, EDC200, we're the people the education department is trying to weed out. they throw at us this gigantic teacher ed program application and all kinds of dates we have to turn stuff in by. they give us a dated book full of cases where teachers screw up and get fired. they tell us everything that goes wrong when you become a teacher.

their goal: to scare us. the ones who survive, those are the true teachers and get accepted into the teacher ed program.

seven weeks into this course, i am true teacher waiting on acceptance. but i knew this forever ago. so now it's just looking through this dated book a cases. my book is so old that one of the cases deals with people not understanding how computers work. i mean, really. let's update, people.

there is a second aspect to my weeder class: teacher placement. each of us must venture out into the world of middle school or high school and observe and help out a classroom for twenty hours. this sounded like a lot until i realized that i needed forty hours after christmas.

after contacting my unknown placement teacher and alerting her that i would be intruding on her spanish classes every tuesday and thursday from nine until eleven, i prepared myself. i went to the business office and got a nice, cute little nametag that says Ms. Hollenberg on it. i spent a long time deciding what clothes to wear. i packed my bags the night before.

i knew for a fact that i should've woken up the circle of life or pumped up kicks. those generally lead to good days. i instead decided to wake up to an unknown kate nash song that had a bouncy, happy beginning. but oh, how it dampened my day.

literally.

it was cold and rainy yesterday morning when i bounced out of bed at seven thirty-four with kate nash banging something cheerful on her piano. i speeded into my bathroom, excited as ever to find... that my hot water heater had broken. i shivered in my towel on the cold tile floor for a while, thinking that maybe the hot water would magically come spurting out of my showerhead, but it never did. i, of course, had no time to wait. i had to shower shower shower so i could eat eat eat then i could leave leave leave to go teach teach teach.

so i took a terrifically quick shower that was very reminiscent of antarctica.

i then shimmied into my dress pants, couldn't button the three decorative buttons in a timely manner, pulled on my yellow shirt, then my plum colored cardigan, strung on a pearl necklace, and pinned my little nametag pin. my dress pants, however comfy and professional, are long, even for my incredible leg length. this meant it was going to be a day for heels to keep my hems dry. i was praying to god that my placement teacher wasn't short because when i wear heels, i am six feet tall.

i grabbed my gigantic purple purse and headed out into the rain under my bubble umbrella. i clacked my way through breakfast, then clacked my way to my car, where i discovered something lurking under my seat that looked suspiciously like my brother's taco bell from a few nights ago. and i headed through the cold rain to alma high school. i had vague directions and a foggy windshield. and i was terrified.

after almost going through the DO NOT ENTER part of the parking lot, i creeped around the building, trying to see where the office might be located. i had a background check to turn in and administration to alert. so i found what looked like the office and parked between two old beat up trucks.

i scurried as quickly as i could through the wind and rain in my heels and strode right up the office door. of course, the office wasn't an office; it was a gigantic art room. like, seriously, the art rooms at my high school were never that big, and my high school was at least TWICE the size of this one. the doors by this art room were locked, so i set back into the rain (without my umbrella) with my glasses all spattered. i had no idea where to look for a door next, so i just began to half-run ungainly around the building.

i located a kid who looked like a senior. he was standing outside of a door with one foot barely propping it open talking on a cell phone. i smiled like the chesire cat at him in my little teachery outfit and he shrugged and let me inside.

now i was in the maze of an unknown high school in what looked like the music wing.

i walked loudly with my purse swinging, trying to figure out which way to go. i found a long hallway and a nice kid in a tie, and i instantly accosted him. he told me to go straight and when it forked, go right and i'd run into the office. so my large heeled feet when straight and to the right.

and straight and to the right. and straight and to the right. and straight and to the right. you get the point.

i entered the first office i came to and told the secretary who i was. she smiled ever so sweetly and told me in a voice like honey, "oh, dear, you're in the wrong office. you want the office three doors down."

this freakin' high school had four offices. all next to each other.

i still had ten minutes. i set off... you guessed it. straight and to the right.

i caught that secretary on her way out. she wasn't nearly so friendly. she told me my placement teacher's (mrs. johnson) room number and sent me in the right direction. now i was wandering down a loop.

i located mrs. johnson's room. it was across from the auditorium and near a boys' bathroom. i hadn't run into a girls' one yet. if need be, i have no issue going into a men's bathroom to do my business. when you gotta go, you gotta go.

i had five minutes to spare, so i huddled awkwardly outside of her door for a moment. i didn't want to be early, and now i was downright terrified; what was placement going to be like? what was mrs. johnson going to be like? what level of spanish did she teach? and i was extemely unnerved.

her class was screaming.

i knocked and was let in and on a vocabulary game being played by a very loud spanish one class. i sat down in the back and a kid instantly began to ask me about my socks, which of course, were brightly colored and didn't match anything, least of all themselves. i tugged my dress pants down and watched as the class commenced to play tortuga. that's turtle in spanish.

in a nutshell, i'm really not blogging about placement. i'm blogging about how i got to placement, and i've had a lot of blogs like these. blogs where i describe my ridiculous life in some ridiculous situation.

i will blog about actual placement later when i've done something concrete. so far placement has been like this.

1. go through a lot of shenanigans to get there.
2. observe for two hours.
3. get promised that later you'll be leading games and tutoring kids.

when i get to the point where i begin to actually teach, i'll get back to you.

then it will really be a growing up blog.




post script: my placement teacher is short. i am now her awkwardly tall assistant. i think i'm done wearing heels.